Via Eli I saw that there was some odd stuff at WUWT (nothing new there you might say). The weirdness is the ATI vs Mann case, or whatever it is called, and the ATI are complaining that Mann is allowed to be a party to a case about his own emails. Or something; the legalese is dull, obviously. The ATI counsel appear to have been doing some very dodgy things, like running the case whilst working for the EPA.

Anyway, I thought it would be entertaining to tweak them a bit, and did so for a while. What is funny (apart from their inability to count to 4) is the way they are happy to leap upon complete misrepresentations by their opponents of what people have said, and then attack those words. And the weird assertion that IPCC AR4 didn’t use MBH. And their apparent belief in complete openness for all emails… except their own. And their friends.

“Schnare, it turns out, was actually a federal civil servant with EPA(!) until a few months ago. According to Nature News, he misrepresented himself in communications with UVa, furthermore, he was not granted permission to engage in outside activity for ATI by his federal employers. This is not surprising either, since ATI has worked on lawsuits associated with challenging the EPA Endangerment Finding which would be a conflict of interest – and doubly so for a lawyer. Thus work that Schnare did as a litigator for ATI while on EPA payroll was a clear violation of Federal ethics rules.”

The detour into IPCC WG IV was fun, but then Smokey is one of the dimmer commenters at WFUWT. And that is saying something given the basic neanderthal level of intellect displayed by many of the most vociferous people there.

[WG4 was particularly bad. Other bits are more interesting though – the HS-from-noise stuff they clearly believe, and have never seen DC’s piece. What I find harder to understand is the all-emails-should-be-public stuff: clearly, they’ve worked themselves up into a froth and kinda believe it, but only for other people, so there is a basic lack of thought there -W]

However, it did remind me to reprise some August 2010 events in which The Stoat was helpfully involved, along with dogs subject to the stars. I’ve been too busy with other things, so thank Tufty for bringing this up.

A) Was a prosecutor for the Virginia Attorney General’s office.
B) Received his Juris Doctor Cum Laude from the George Mason University School of Law.
C) Is, or was, Director of the George Mason University School of Law Alumni Association Board.

My point was that his (wrong) claim of sneaky code that turns anything – even good data – into garbage is not the definition of garbage in, garbage out. Shouldn’t that expression be about garbage coming out because garbage went in?

A mistake like that is an indicator of a person having confidence that far outstrips his intellect, in my opinion. But I’m not a “science oriented individual”.

[I did wonder if that is what you meant. But arguably random noise is garbage. Though the HS result isn’t, but I suppose he thinks it is -W]

Take that commenter who couldn’t figure out that you were talking about the paraphrase of Mann in the court proceedings, not anything he said in the emails. He knows he’s on the right side and your on the wrong side, so his idiotic interpretation of your point must be correct.

Hey, I’m confused. I was working on the SourceWatch page for the American (aka Western) Tradition Institute (which doesn’t pay any wages, according to its 2010 Form 990, which seems curious) and went looking for its reputed related 501c4, the American (aka Western) Tradition Partnership, but I can’t find either “parnership” org name on Guidestar.
(I can find it on the Colo SoS website, it’s #20081173078 as American Tradition Partnership, but shouldn’t it be on Guidestar if it’s a true 501c4? – and with enough revenue, if it could give ATI $40k, to have to file a 990, right?)

I think this is the wrong place to ask, but if you know…

[This is the wrong place :-). I suspect you’d be better off asking Eli -W]

I’ve run into the “MBH was debunked and thus removed from the IPCC report” argument before. But usually when you link to the AR4 graph that includes MBH, people shut up or change the subject. Pretty impressive that Smokey keeps on chooglin’ with that argument so that we observers can plumb the depths of his ignorance.

I don’t know, but if something’s confusing, perhaps because it’s because it was deliberately made confusing, as John Mashey once said. Speaking of that, I think Mashey knows more about obfuscatory money flows than pretty much any of us here.

And about the WUWT comment thread, how can we be sure that the majority of ‘people’ commenting on the thread aren’t actually sockpuppets created by the likes of HBGary Federal? :)

re: 15 Anna
I’ve had trouble at Eli’s as well, but you might check your FF options:
at least at one point, turning on “Accept third party cookies” made it work. I tried the same post without that ON, and it just disappeared.

Frank: thanks, but I’m only an amateur … on the other hand, I have gotten used to reading From 990s a… and interesting tidbits will appear in the near future.